Matriarch dies, but the 129-year-old Morse Harris ranch continues to thrive

Jayne Harris Voiles loved the pasture in Spring Creek and her family’s Indian heritage. Her wish was to be buried on an Indian scaffold in that part of her 15,489-acre ranch, the oldest in Campbell County. When she died in her sleep on Sept. 28 at the age of 70, her children were confronted with fulfilling that desire and the realities of life. While they had to make some compromises to find a resting place their mother would want — on the ranch — they have left little doubt of their desire to see the Morse Harris Ranch continue. The ranch, in its 129th year, pre-dates Campbell County and even the state of Wyoming. It is the oldest ranch still existing in the same family in Campbell County, which celebrates its 100th year in 2011. So Jayne Harris Voiles’ children, Charlene Camblin, and Bobby and Brad Harris, will form a partnership that will keep their heritage and the ranch alive for a fourth generation. They’ll oversee the ranch operations north of Gillette, near the Montana border, on White Tail Creek. Wayne Morse couldn’t foresee that in 1882 when he settled near a spring in a small valley at White Tail Creek. He had been told about the area by a rancher and it included the thriving spring, meadows and lots of wildlife. At the time, he and friend Bill Rogers — the same man who was the first to climb Devils Tower — were wintering at Little Thunder Basin, where they cut a fireplace out of the coal banks and killed deer and buffalo, which they later sold to gold miners in the Black Hills. Rogers talked Morse into starting a ranch with the money they earned, building it up and later selling out to one of the big cow outfits. The two were hands on the T7 Ranch when they met and decided on that plan. But after “proving up” on the land, Morse and Rogers turned down the rancher’s offer to buy them out for $1,000 and give them jobs in a proposed bull camp...more